Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
This prequel to the TV series has one joust after another, spectacular stagecraft and plenty of modern resonance

During the RSC’s 65 years, numerous Lears have lost their minds and frequent Caesars been slaughtered by their courts. Now, though, a tyrant new to its stages faces both fates. He is King Aerys II Targaryen, ancestor of one warring bloodline in Game of Thrones, the dramatisation of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels that helped TV streamers’ rise to global domination during eight HBO seasons from 2011 to 2019.

Some may balk at an institution named for England’s greatest dramatist staging an American drama franchise. There is, though, a compelling economic imperative: rising costs due to current wars (a frequent problem for Martin’s ancient oligarchs too) and Covid-era debts now exacerbated by paying back government loans means that the RSC could use another big commercial transfer – as its musical Matilda may not be immortal.

After being on the brink of divorce, Antonia and Rob have experienced a radical revival of their sex life

• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

The perfect storm of work stress, menopause and raising kids meant our sex life slowly slipped out of view

Black people are more prominent than ever in the UK’s politics and culture. But are they overwhelmingly from the middle class, as Brown argues in his new book? And if so, why isn’t anyone talking about it?

Symeon Brown and David Lammy went to the same primary school in Tottenham, north London. One went on to a selective secondary school, and became the second black person to hold one of Britain’s great offices of state. The other became a journalist who would go on to survey the country’s black professional class more thoroughly than anyone ever had – and who remembers being told by Lammy that he could “never become prime minister, because you sound like where you come from”.

It was 2010, and Brown, interested in politics, was interning for the then Labour backbencher. “And he was right, certainly at the time,” Brown says now.

Whitehall wants to triple their number in the UK. Yet in Slough, I saw the impact they’re having on communities

Amid headlines about the UK’s drought, Europe’s wildfires and impossible global temperatures, it was 28C when I arrived in Slough last Monday. I was there to look around Slough Trading Estate, a place that might once have conjured up images of the TV comedy The Office, many of whose laughs came at the expense of this overgrown patch of suburbia, 20-odd miles west of London.

But these days, this area of town – an incongruous mixture of old-school businesses such as Mr Clutch and Angling Direct, and vast, metal-clad leviathans that look like something pulled from JG Ballard – has become a byword for the constant expansion of datacentres, those hulking symbols of the vast computing power that big tech now requires, not least because of the ever-more complex workings of artificial intelligence.

Bombus dahlbomii, a giant ginger bumblebee fondly known as the flying mouse, is in decline in its native Patagonia due to commercial farming

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We all love bumblebees. Not only are they beautiful, busy and social, they perform pollination services that are crucial for plants, crops and human civilisation.

Any bumblebee would be a worthy winner of invertebrate of the year but a gorgeous giant ginger bumblebee fondly known as the flying mouse? Come on!

US-Iran war has stranded up to 20,000 seafarers, mostly Indian and Filipino crews, with none knowing when the nightmare will end

The panicked crew of a cargo ship broadcast a distress signal late on Monday night from their location in the strait of Hormuz. About 20 nautical miles north of the coast of Oman, the Minoan Pioneer bulk carrier was hit by an unknown projectile, causing a blackout in the engine room and a fire in the accommodation area.

The crew scrambled to put out the blaze and called for help from nearby vessels. When they managed to disembark from the Greek-owned, Liberian-flagged ship on Tuesday morning, they realised the third engineer was missing. Days later, he is yet to be found.

Exclusive: Hamish Falconer wants ‘sense of renewed pace’ in post-Brexit talks while staying within Labour’s red lines

• ‘I was on my honeymoon!’: Hamish Falconer’s surprise call-up to Burnham’s cabinet

The UK will move faster and be more ambitious on achieving closer ties with Europe under Andy Burnham’s government, his new chief post-Brexit negotiator has said.

Hamish Falconer, the new cabinet minister in charge of the EU reset talks, said there was “room to be ambitious” within Labour’s red lines on Europe, which exclude reopening discussions on the single market and customs union, and he would look at the “art of the possible”.

Israeli PM says IDF will not withdraw until Hamas is disarmed and rebukes US pressure to end wars without his country’s buy-in

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed 15-point peace plan for Gaza in a rare public break with Donald Trump.

In a statement on Sunday, Netanyahu said that he was confronting a “wave of rumours about Israeli weakness and Israeli withdrawals on all fronts” and rebuked US pressure to end wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran without Israel’s buy-in.

Katie and John Meehan say responses to campaign they launched after death of daughter Genevieve must be ‘wake-up call’

The parents of a nine-month-old girl who died after being placed in an unsafe sleeping position at nursery said they feared poor practice may be “rife” across England.

Genevieve Meehan suffocated when she was strapped face down to a beanbag for an hour and 37 minutes at a nursery in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, in May 2022.

Kinahan built boxing empire while in exile in Dubai but now faces trial in Dublin charged with directing organised crime

A decade after escaping assassination and fleeing into exile, Daniel Kinahan is back in Ireland – but it is not the homecoming he wanted.

The alleged leader of the Kinahan organised crime group was extradited from Dubai in an Irish government jet on Sunday and met by a huge security operation in Dublin, marking the end of a global game of cat and mouse with European, US and Gulf authorities.